Acts 13:9

Then[But] Saul, who also is called Paul The proconsul had been determined in his purpose, and Saul had come before him. At this point we first meet the name by which the great Apostle is best known throughout the Christian Church, and many reasons have been given why he assumed this name, and why at this time. Some have thought that the name was adopted from the proconsul's, his first convert of distinction, but this is utterly alien to all we know of the character of St Paul, with his sole glory in the cross of Christ. Far more likely is he to have been attracted to it, if it were not his before, by the meaning of the Latin word (paullus= little) and its fitness to be the name of him who called himself the leastof the Apostles. But perhaps he only did what other Jews were in the habit of doing when they went into foreign lands, and chose him a name of some significance (for the Jews were fond of names with a meaning) among those with whom he was about to mix. Dean Howson (Lifeand Letters of St Paul, i. p. 164) compares Jose Jason; Hillel Julus, and probably the similarity of sound did often guide the choice of such a name, and it may have been so with the Apostle's selection. St Luke, recognizing that the history of St Paul is now to be his chief theme and that the work for which he was separated was now begun, names the Apostle henceforth only by the name which became most current in the Churches.

filled with the Holy Ghost So that the punishment inflicted on Elymas was dictated to the Apostle by the Spirit, and he knew from the inward prompting thereof, that what he spake would come to pass.

set[fastened] his eyes on him For Elymas was standing by, doubtless ready to catch at anything which he might be able to turn to the discredit of the Apostles.